HMCI Report December 2013 (Headlines)
Grounds for optimism but serious challenges remain - The Annual Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills 2012/13
The 'battle against mediocrity' is slowly being won but major barriers continue to prevent England’s education system from competing with the best in the world. Overall, schools and colleges across the country were performing better than they were a year ago. Looking at the evidence across all sectors, there are unmistakeable signs that England’s education system is gradually improving. our new frameworks have raised expectations and established that only "good" is good enough. Key Themes a number of factors are impeding educational progress, including: too much mediocre teaching and weak leadership regional variation in the quality of education the significant underachievement of children from low income families, particularly White children.
HMCI also voiced concerns about: Behaviour • • •
minor disruption and inattention in the classroom had been tolerated for too long in too many of England’s schools. As part of a concerted focus on culture and behaviour by Ofsted in the year ahead, inspectors will make ‘no-notice’ visits to schools where they have identified poor behaviour as a particular concern.
“classrooms must be orderly places. Around 700,000 pupils attend schools where behaviour needs to improve. Unless this changes, teachers will struggle to create an environment in which all children learn well.'
Teaching •
judgements about the quality of teaching are predicated not on the style of teaching, but on the amount of useful learning that takes place in the lesson.
Why isn’t there more good teaching? 37. In our ‘Moving English forward’ report,6 evidence from three years of the inspection of English found that learning in schools was limited by some common misconceptions about what constitutes good teaching. Inspectors do not expect to see a particular teaching style, but senior and middle leaders in schools too often mistake a ‘busy’ lesson for a good one, or adopt an approach to planning, teaching or observing lessons that is overly bureaucratic. Common misconceptions include the following: • Pace – A belief that the faster the lesson, the better the learning. While pace is important – pupils may lose concentration in a slow lesson – teachers concentrate too often on the pace of the activity rather than the amount of learning. • The number of activities – Some teachers believe that the more activities they can cram into the lesson, the more effective it will be. This is often counterproductive, as activities are changed so often that pupils do not complete tasks and learning is not consolidated or extended. Over-detailed and bureaucratic lesson plans • – Excessive detail within these plans can cause teachers to lose sight of the central focus on pupils’ learning. • An inflexible approach to planning lessons – Some school policies insist that all lesson plans should always follow the same structure, no matter what is being taught. The key consideration should be the development of pupils’ learning rather than sticking rigidly to a format. • Constant review of learning in lessons – In lessons observed, significant periods of time were spent by teachers on getting pupils to articulate their learning before they had completed enough work. Indeed, inspectors observed lessons where pupils were asked to self- or peer-assess work before they had been able to complete more than a sentence or two.
Testing •
HMCI called on the government to consider a return to more formal external testing of children at the end of Key Stage 1 to make sure every child at this formative age is making the necessary progress.
Tale of Two Nations •
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Children from similar backgrounds with similar abilities, but who happen to be born in different regions and attend different schools and colleges, can end up with widely different prospects because of the variable quality of their education.' that there needed to be a fair distribution of good teachers and leaders throughout the country in order to raise standards. that teachers and leaders were provided with the necessary incentives to move to the parts of the country with the greatest need for high quality staff.
Inspections • • • •
more than 8,500 inspections carried out during 2012/13 of schools, adult learning, skills and colleges. An annual report devoted to early years education will be published by Ofsted in early 2014. Ofsted is also publishing separate reports on standards in each of England’s regions. The interactive tool, Dataview, also highlights for the first time sometimes stark differences in the performance of schools and colleges in local authority areas that share the same profile.
The key findings for schools are: Nearly eight in 10 schools in England are now good or better – the highest proportion since Ofsted was founded 20 years ago Around 485,000 more primary school pupils and 188,000 more secondary school pupils attend a good or better school compared with a year ago Nearly a quarter of a million pupils are still languishing in inadequate schools There are only three local authorities where fewer than 60 per cent of primary school pupils attend a good or better school compared with 23 local authorities in 2011/12 Major concerns remain over secondary school provision in some parts of the country – in 13 local authorities less than half of secondary pupils attend a good or outstanding school Inspectors judged teaching overall to be good or outstanding in 65 per cent of schools, up three percentage points from last year There were more English and mathematics lessons judged less than good than in many other parts of the curriculum Much of the weakest teaching in schools was concentrated in the lower attaining sets and in the younger age groups, in both primary and secondary schools The significant growth in the number of academies over the last few years has helped to raise standards in many of England’s weakest schools Too few of the new converter academies are using their status to raise standards further Poor White children, by far the largest proportion of children eligible for free school meals, are being left behind. Since 2007, the attainment of this group has improved more slowly than all other ethnic groups.